And now from Mike...

Tom's done a great job of intro for PAC Tour and how he got here so a little context for those that know me and not Tom... My first trip with Tom was coincidental (we were both on our first European bike trip in 2004 in the French Alps), the next trip together was accidental (my friend and roommate Steve went down in a corner on day 2 of a trip in the Dolomites and had to go home, so 24 hours and 30K frequent flier miles later there was Tom at the Bolzano train station to take his place), and the next three trips were intentional as we planned in advance to ride together (Pyranees, Swiss Alps, Tirolean Alps). So what's Tom like? Tom lives for epic days on a bike (over 10K vertical feet), TVs (always on to CNN), his various bicycle computers (currently Garmin), and his Excel spreadsheet that records every mile, vertical foot, and heartbeat ever taken on a bike. Note: this is someone who will ride circles in the parking lot after a ride to round up his milage and\or vertical feet for the day. If Tom is drinking coffee, doesn't matter if it's made with dirt at Jack in the Box in Seattle or a capuccino in an Italian cafe, then he's thrilled, it's always Wonderful Coffee. But if you're late to a meeting point (2+ minutes), you try to simply divide up a restaurant bill after doing a disproportionate amount of the drinking, or if the Husky football team loses, then Tom's "accounting personality" comes out, although (happily) it passes quickly. And as you can tell from his fund raising, he's a proud Estonian and contributor to Baltic programs here in the states.

Which leaves just one question: WHY? Why am I doing this, why encourage Tom to do this? The answer is because it's one of few things really and truly on my Bucket List, it's been there since 1976. Anyone remember that year, the bicentennial of the US? Way back then I was 12 (my wife was 5...) and a group called Bikecentennial published a set of maps for people (crazy! insane! nutty!) who wanted to ride a bicycle across the country. And I remember reading about Bikecentennial, and I remember wanting to do it. The years came and went, but the interest in crossing the US on a bike never faded, so after I become aware of PACTour from another rider in 2006 I looked at http://www.pactour.com/ from time to time to see when they would run the Northern Continental, their longest tour, probably their hardest, and the one that stays the farthest north in the crossing (vs the Southern Continental or the Oregon Trail tour, which finishes in New Orleans, in August, yuck!). And then last fall there it was: Northern Continental 2010. Why? Because I gotta go and I gotta know: mentally, physically, it will be the hardest thing I've ever done... can I do it? Let's roll.